He has a distinctive soft voice and an often noisy, self-taught guitar style consisting almost entirely of extended techniques, described by Brian Olewnick "studiedly naïve ... sounding like the bastard child of Derek Bailey";[2] his guitar work is contrasted frequently with gentler, sensuous Brazilian music themes.

In the late 1970s, he co-formed the seminal no wave group DNA with Ikue Mori and Robin Crutchfield, although Tim Wright of Pere Ubu fame would soon replace Crutchfield. In 1978, DNA was featured on the four-band sampler No New York (produced by Brian Eno) which brought an early taste of international notoriety to the group, and which quickly became the essential document of No Wave. The famous rock critic Lester Bangs once described the group's ritualistic vocals, and deliberately primitive, speaker-shredding guitar as “horrible noise.”

In the early 1980s, Lindsay, and his particular style of guitar work and singing featured prominently in the early recordings of The Lounge Lizards and The Golden Palominos. These groups continued to break down distinctions between rock music, pop music, improvisation and avant-garde experimentalism. It was during this time that Lindsay established a collaborative friendship with John Zorn, playing in a number of his ensembles including Locus Solus.

After leaving the Lounge Lizards, Lindsay formed the Ambitious Lovers with keyboardist Peter Scherer. This music was decidedly more pop influenced and featured more prominent attention to Brazilian music, like samba and bossa nova. In an interview with BOMB magazine, Lindsay explained, "Listen to the Ambitious Lovers, the whole idea was Al Green and samba. That against this; this against that; not a blend, a juxtaposition, loud/soft. There's no particular point in putting these things together. The point is what comes out in the end." [3] Although their three albums, Greed, Envy, and Lust were Lindsay's first forays with a major record label, these albums genre-bending pop never caught on in the mainstream. The Ambitious Lovers disbanded in 1991, although Lindsay continued a strong working relationship with Scherer, and continued to record with him.

In the early 1990s. Lindsay began to rarefy his singing voice and launched a solo career which was significantly more oriented toward his Brazilian roots, singing in Portuguese more frequently, throwing in occasional covers of bossa nova classics like [Tom JObim]'s "Este Seu Olhar", and updating his sound from 1980s new wave to more current types of electronica on albums such as O Corpo Sutil (The Subtle Body) (1996), Mundo Civilizado (1997), Noon Chill (1998), Prize (1999), Invoke (2002), and Salt (2004). Lindsay worked extensively with bassist Melvin Gibbs, guitarist Vinicius Cantuária, and producer Andres Levin to help create his sound.

Throughout the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Lindsay also composed a number of soundtracks, dance commissions and continued in a No Wave- related styles most notably with the Arto Lindsay Trio, with Gibbs and Dougie Bowne, who released Aggregates 1-26 on the Knitting Factory label in 1995. He performed on the track "Counting the Roses," featured in the video game D2.

He has also collaborated with Japanese artist Noritoshi Hirakawa at an exhibition at Deitch Projects, and as part of a sound-art exhibition at PS1, a gallery in New York. His list of artist collaborations is long ranging from a parade with Matthew Barney to soundtracks for Dominique Gozalez-Foerter and Phillipe Parreno and installations with Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Arto Lindsay has written the epilogue for the official biography of the German experimental band Einstürzende NeubautenNo beauty without danger (German title: Nur was nicht ist, ist möglich).

In 2013, Arto Lindsay contributed vocals to the song ″I Guess We're Floating" by Stephon Alexander & Rioux (musician). The song was released on the album Here Comes Now in August 2014 on Connect Records.[4]

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